Email this article to a friend

Inside the Presidential Innovation Fellows program: A Q&A with the White House

Faster and improved disaster response can save lives. A streamlined
buying process can save the government hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Better technology can give the public access to important data in minutes instead
of hours.

Over the past two years, 61 talented and diverse individuals from the private
sector teamed up with federal agencies to develop solutions like these to some of
the nation's toughest challenges.

After marked success in the first two rounds, the Presidential
Innovation Fellows program is now accepting
applications for Round 3 until April 7, 2014. Round 1 of the program launched in
August 2012 with five projects. Round 2 launched in June 2013 with 10 projects
and is currently ongoing.

Jennifer Pahlka, the deputy chief technology officer in the White House Office of
Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), helps oversee and run the Presidential
Innovation Fellows program along with others in OSTP and the General Services
Administration. In an exclusive interview with Federal News Radio, Pahlka explains
how the fellows program was born and what impact the projects are making.

Listen to Pahlka's full interview with Federal News Radio or read excerpts below.

Jennifer Pahlka: A Presidential Innovation Fellow is someone who wants to
serve his or
her country and has the
skills that we need to bring government along to be truly a 21st century
government. They come and partner
together with some amazing leaders and forward thinking folks in government to
work on projects that have
had a fantastic track record of success.

FNR: How did the idea for the program come up and why does it exist?

JP: My boss, Federal Chief Technology Officer Todd Park, really saw there
was an opportunity to
bring folks in who could look at problems in a bit of a different way and say,
"Let's solve this in months
instead of years." He saw folks doing this in other programs around the country,
and he saw the impact that
people could have when they came in for short periods of time.

FNR: A misconception out there is that the fellows program is similar to an
internship, or these fellows are just out of college — but that's not true.
Who are the fellows and where do they come from?

JP: They come from very diverse backgrounds. The youngest fellow has been
in his 20s and the
oldest in his 70s. They are an incredibly diverse bunch — men, women from
all over the country who
really just want to come to government for a year and make an enormous difference.

They generally have a fair amount of experience. They're also really coming to
this from the perspective of
what they've achieved in life, rather than the positions they've held. A fair
number of them come from what
Todd Park likes to call "metaphysical Silicon Valley," which doesn't mean they are
actually from Silicon Valley,
but that they are working in a way that is consistent with the very generative
kinds of platforms that have had
such an impact on the world in the past 20 years.

FNR: Do you have fellows coming from both the public and private sector?

JP: A larger number of fellows come from the private sector, but we
certainly do have a number of
them who have been in public service for some time.

FNR: Is there any opportunity for people living internationally to
participate in the fellows
program?

JP: We do accept applications, so as long as you're legally applicable to
work in the United States,
we'd love to have you work as a fellow.

(What is a Presidential Innovation Fellow? GSA's Lena Trudeau, who helps
oversee the program, and three fellows explain it in their own words. Interview
with Pahlka continues below video.)

FNR: You mentioned RFP-EZ as one of the great successes of this program.
Could you mention a
few other success stories of programs and fellows?

JP: The Blue Button Initiative is a way that Americans have secure,
electronic access to their own
health information. That was kicked off in the first round, and now it reaches
millions of Americans. It started
out as a project for veterans, for whom access to health information is so
critical. But now it reaches so many
more people and will be, I think, the standard in the United States pretty soon.

Following on the heels of that, the Green Button Initiative provides electric
utility customers with easy and
secure access to their energy usage. This helps people understand what they're
spending, and how they
might reduce their spending using third party apps. There's an enormous ecosystem
of companies and jobs
that are created when you release this data. People can do things with it that
help you change behavior and
change, really, the course of the country.

Another great example is a current project at the Food and Drug Administration.
The fellow there was able to
make an enormous amount of data about the adverse effects of drugs available in
digital format and available
through an API, such that you can actually look at this data now and see trends in
it in mere seconds rather
than months. The FDA is actually going to be able to use this data to much more
effectively save lives. This
is something that can be very, very hard to do, but the fellow, Sean Herron,
worked with his partners in the
FDA. Together they were able to get this done in so much less time, and it's
really going to have an impact on
people's lives.

FNR: Once the projects are completed, how do different agencies adopt and
begin to use them?
Are the projects targeted to one agency, many agencies, or do they directly impact
the public?

JP: Many of the projects do directly impact the public, and usually that's
after they've had their
impact within government. This is the wonderful thing for someone really wanting
to make an enormous
difference with their work, because they're working inside federal government,
where you can have that
impact. The projects that the fellows work on have a home. They have
sustainability because they're
developed in conjunction with the institution that will maintain them.

FNR: How is each round similar or different from one another? Do the rounds
build off of each
other?

JP: They absolutely do build off of each other. One of the points of
consistency you'll see is in one
of the three categories of fellows for Round 3, which is data
innovation. That is
building off two years of
successful outcomes with open data fellows who work to make data available and the
MyData
Initiative, like the Green Button, Blue Button and Gold Button Initiative.

Each project is different and each fellow has a different experience. But there
is also a lot in common across
the fellows experience and around the kinds of things that fellows tend to do in
these programs.

From left to right: Sarah Allen, Diego Mayer-Cantu, and Jason Shen - the three fellows working on open data initiatives at the Smithsonian Institution. Click the picture above to view a photo gallery of all of the Round 2 fellows.

We have some fellows working with the Smithsonian Institution this year. One of
the things they were able to
do was have an amazing hackathon using the release of some of the data from one of
the really beautiful
collections in the Smithsonian. And people came together and built beautiful apps
with this data that allow
you to see the collection in gorgeous digital format.

This is something that many fellows do — they make the data open and then
they bring the community
in to make more out of it than just the government could or just the fellows
program could. That's just one
example of the way the fellows use the same kinds of tactics and same kinds of
outreach mechanisms.

FNR: You recently announced applications are open for Round 3 of the fellows
program.
How does the
application and selection process work?

JP: The application process is open to anybody who feels
drawn to this kind of work
and is very excited about the chance to have a great impact and to serve our
country. We are accepting
applications right now through April 7. You can see our information about all of
the projects at
WhiteHouse.gov/InnovationFellows. And I really, really
encourage anybody who's ever
thought about serving
our country in this particular way to check it out and fill out an
application.

It's certainly a big crew of
people who want to help. We
have a wonderful panel of subject matter experts who will help select Round 3
along with agency partners. We
always meet such amazing people through it.

FNR: Are there plans to continue the program into Round 4?

JP: I certainly hope that we continue this program for many, many years to
come.